Read the following magazine article about e-mail and answer questions 24-28 on
page 11. On your answer sheet, indicate the letter A, B, C or D against the number of
each question. Give only one answer to each question,
Indicate your answers on the separate answer sheet.
WHEN E-MAIL
BECOMES E-NOUGH
measure of e-mail was an American friend
who was high up in a big corporation
Some years ago, when this method of
communication first seeped into business life
from academia, nis company in New York and its
satellites across the globe were among the first to
gett. In the world's great seats of learning,
‘email had for some years allovied researchers to
share vital new jokes. And if there was
cutting-edge wit to be had, there was no way my
fiend's corporation would be without it
T he first person | came actoss who'd got t!
(One evening in New York, he was late for a drink
we'd artanged, ‘So:ry' he said, 'I've been away
and had to deal with 998 e-mails in my queue.’
‘Wow! | said, ‘I'm really sunprised you made it
before midnight"
‘tt doesn't really take that long’ he explained, ‘if
you simply delete them all!
Tue to foim, he had developed a strategy before
most of us had even heard of e-mail. I any
information he was sent was sufficiently vital, his
lack of response would ensure the sender rang
him up. Ifthe sender wasn't important enough to
have his private number, the communication
couldn't be sufficiently important. My friend is
now. even more senior in the seme company, so
the strategy must work, although these days, 1
dor't tend to send him many emails.
Almost evety week now, there seems to be
another report suggesting that we are all being
driven crazy by the torment of e-mail. But if this is
the case, t's only because we haven't developed
the same discrimination in dealing with e-mail as
we do with post. Have you ever mistaken an
TEST 1, PAPER 1
important eter for a piece of unsolicited
advertising and thrown it out? Of course you
haven't. This is because of the obliging stupidity
‘of 99 per cent of advertisers, who just can't help
making their meilshots look like the junk mail that
they are. Junk e-mail looks equally unnecessary to
read. Why anyone would feel the slightost
compulsion to open the sort of thing entitled
SPECIALOFFER@junk.com | cannot begin to
Undeistand. Even viruses, those sneaky messages
that contain a bug which can corrupt your whole
‘computer system, come helpfully labelled with
packaging that shrieks ‘danoer, do not open’.
Handling e-mail is an art Frsty, you junk
anything with an exclamation mark or a string of
capital letters, or from any address you don't
recognise or fee! confident about. Secondly, while
I can't quite support my American friend's radical
policy, e-mails don't all have to be answered.
Becallse e-mailing is so easy, there's a tendency
for correspondence to carry on for ever, but itis
peimissible to end a strand of discussion by
simply not discussing it any longer ~ or to accent
2 point of information sent by a colleague
without acknowledging it
Thirdly, a reply e-mail doesn't have to be the
same length as the originel. We all have e-mail
buddies who send long, chatty e-mails, which are
nice to receive, but who then expect an equally
long reply. Tough. The charm of e-mail can lie in
the simple, suspended sentence, with total
discegard for the formalities of the letter sent by
post. You are perfectly within the bounds of
politeness in responding to e marathon e-mail
with a terse onediner, like: How distressing. I'm
sure it will clear up.